How Much Is One Follower Worth On Steemit?
Gaining followers is a crucial aspect of success on Steemit. You need eyes on your content in order to gain traction. Everyone has a strategy. But some strategies are better than others. And one approach to gaining followers is particularly pernicious...
Spend any amount of time on Steemit, and you will see this practice.
F4F, or follow-for-follow, is the practice of following random Steemians in the hopes that they will follow you back. There are countless YouTube videos that recommend that you start clicking follow, follow, follow, etc. until you’ve followed thousands of people. Then, a small percentage of them follow you back, and you now have a sizable “following”. This is true, if you can call that an actual following.
So how much is one follower on Steemit actually worth?
F4F Followers
There is no single answer to this question. But it seems safe to assume that not all followers are created equal. The act of F4F can yield you a lot of followers, but none of these people actually care about your content. F4F will give you an impressive number of followers, but the level of engagement you will get from these Steemians is next to nothing. The reason is that you followed them for selfish reasons, and they followed you for selfish reasons. Neither of you were actually interested in helping each other.
What is the value of a single follower on Steemit acquired through F4F? Probably next to zero.
Real Followers
The best kinds of followers are the followers that care about you. They are the followers that care about what you create. Valuable followers are Steemians that you have created a relationship with. For example, meeting Steemians through Discord channels, geared towards creating authentic engagement between users, is a great way to meet real followers. I’ve had some early success through The Steemit Bloggers Discord and the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Discord. These groups have allowed me to have authentic conversations with individuals that are interested in topics that I think are relevant and important. I’ve become a real follower to people from these groups, and a few of them have grown to care about my blog as well.
What is the value of a single follower acquired through genuine interest and interaction? It’s impossible to put a price tag on a real follower. They will continue to provide value for you again and again, and you will reciprocate their generousity, because you have a real relationship with this person.
So what is the value of one follower? As we see, the answer varies greatly. A follower can be worth nothing, or a follower can be invaluable. We think of followers as a mere numbers game, but a single follower that truly cares about you can be more valuable than legions of apathetic strangers.
Don’t make Steemit a race. What’s the rush? Steemit is meant to be a platform that we enjoy and encourages pro-social behaviour. Be authentic and be generous. These are qualities that people like in face-to-face interactions, so why would it be any different online? Attract real followers that care about your success on Steemit, and your experience of the platform will be richer because of it.
So please, don’t follow me, unless this message truly resonates with you. I’d love to see you showing up in my future articles, but unless they’re helpful to you, there is no reason to follow. I want to provide value to my followers, even if they are few and far between. I would rather one close friend, than one thousand acquaintances.
Great advice about building real followers!
Thanks to @xabi (one of your real followers), this article was resteemed and highlighted for selection in today's edition of The Daily Sneak.
Thank you for your efforts to create quality content!
Wow! Thanks, @Sneakyninja! That means a lot to me. And thanks to @Xabi for the resteem. I am pleased this idea is reaching other Steemians thanks to you two.
You're welcome!
Real followers ;)
Good work dude, keep sharing healthy material :)
stay passionate, stay blessed !
Thanks, Asad. Happy to have you as a real follower! It has been good talking with you over the last few days.
Much obliged to have you :)
Very awesome indeed... I followed you because of our earlier interaction. Here I am visiting your blog and reading this great post by you.
@Xabi! Good to see you again. I hope things are good with you. Yes, we remember when someone takes an interest in us!
Cheers and marry Christmas my friend!
@originalworks
The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @chrismccron to be original material and upvoted it!
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When i saw the title, I thought it was going to be a mathematical calculation like some steemians would post to garner attention. But your article is worth the read and I do agree those two discord channels you mentioned are real communities and not F4F ones, if you post something meaningful, the post will definitely gain votes. Good one Chris! and Merry Christmas =)
Haha thanks! I'd actually love to see hard numbers on F4F followers vs. organic growth "real followers". I'd suspect you'd see much more value in the real followers.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post.
don't mention it, you write good stuff here =D
that's right, I totally agree with this post.
I am happy the message resonates with you!
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by Chris McCron from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews/crimsonclad, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP. Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
I am all about organic growth! Well done! That why I started the anti post dump initiative in my server so people can interact with each other and Personalize post promotion. Everyone, this guy gets it! Happy posting! ♥
It's a good policy, and I really like it! Interaction is crucial and it leads to future engagement. Plus, it just feels good to have people talking with you and sharing their work too. Thanks, Stace!
Awesome. You seem to have covered it all. Well done 🍌🍌🍌.
Many bananas to you my friend. Bananas for all.
Banana party.
I don't do any following at all, I maintain lists and join communities.
My feed started to be so overloaded that I was unable to follow anyone any more.
So, I just click that follow button on a few, services, bots and that's it.
I maintain all connections either through the Twitter, Discord and filtered activity.
For me personally it shows to be the best solution.
Hey @aschatria! I understand your decision. I am following around ~60 Steemians at this point in time, and it already feels like too much. I'll be wary to get past 100 I think. Perhaps I will change my mind, but you lose track of who is who when you mash the follow button too regularly. People that use F4F must have feeds that are completely useless.